The Secret Life of Gypsies
by JustAnotherTeenageWriter
Summary: After a ten year absence in Katara's life. Her New-Age traveler mother suddenly shows up on her fourteenth birthday and whisks her away to a life of festivals and fun, where she meets new people, and some old friends. Will this life be everything she thought it would be? Based off the novel "Dizzy"
1. Chapter 1

I never sleep much the night before my birthday

It's not the usual kind of excitement that comes with birthdays. I don't get all wound up about whether I'll get a new pair of shows, or a new CD, or that necklace I saw in town the other day. It's the necklace, dad told me.  
I'm not stressed about having people over or a party or anything. We have this tradition, my dad and brother. We stay at home with take-out and a movie. Dad and Sokka usually pick something dramatic and action packed like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. I usually picked a Disney movie, either Mulan or Hercules, depending on how I was feeling that day. This year we've got cable and I get complete control of the remote all night long. I'll probably just end up flipping in between music channels while eating Chinese.  
Birthdays are pretty awesome, especially for me and my brother. It's just that no matter how hard I try, I can't relax. I can't not care. I'm always a little bit scared the night before. Every year, I'm up at dawn waiting for the mail because there's one very special card, a package even sometimes that I just have to get. There's only two days of the year I get to hear from her, and tomorrow is one of them.

When I was five, I got a postcard from Katmandu. It had a picture of a Buddhist temple with a pointy golden roof and weird, staring eyes painted beneath it. The message was written in multiple colors of felt pen and had loads of kisses on it.  
When I was six, there was a postcard of a donkey with flowers in its mouth, the postmark said Ireland. The next year I got an actual birthday card and a handmade ragdoll that I carried everywhere with me. On my eighth birthday I there was a postcard from Morocco with a girl with loads of gold bracelets on. The next year I got a rainbow striped hat that I wore every day until it started to fall apart, and a postcard from Whales. They're both stuck on my cork board along with everything else she's sent me. For my eleventh birthday she sent me a book about the power of the elements and how they're all tied together. When I was twelve, she sent me a jade bracelet and a postcard from somewhere in Thailand. It had a picture of an elephant on it. Last year she sent me a necklace with a tiny chunk of pink quartz at the end and I wear it all the time. Even at night.  
There was no postcard that year. Just a letter. It was the kind of letter that was difficult to read, even now. But it was a letter that I also needed years ago. It said that she loved me, and that she was sorry and that we would we would be together again someday. I stuck it to my corkboard along with all the other things she'd sent me over the years.  
I love my mum. But I can't remember her, not really.  
I have two photos of her and both are on my corkboard.  
The first is of her and Dad and little Sokka standing in the rain in front of a courthouse, just married. My mum is tiny and elf like. She has the weird, lilac coloured hair that falls just past her shoulders and it's all braided. She's wearing a sack dress (that was once a lace table cloth) over purple stripped tights and no shoes.  
My dad just looks scary. Bright red hair and this huge black sweater. All smiles.  
I'm in this photo too, just a bump, hidden from view by the flowers that mum's holding.  
The second photo is five months later and there I am for real. I'm a few weeks old; I was small, even by baby standards. I had blue eyes and light brown hair. Mum's face is looking at the camera, looking pale and lost. I've searched that photo over and over again for signs of blessed out motherly love and all that happy family stuff. I just can't find it. She just looks lost. Unhappy.  
She left when I was four.  
I don't remember, of course, but by then we'd lived in a bus, a caravan, a crumbling flat where mold grew on the walls. We toured the music festival, Mum and dad selling lentil soup, dream catchers, scented candles, and homemade earrings. You name it, they did it. They also worked in an organic veggie garden, a whole food café, and even a clog workshop. We lived off of welfare and bought ma and Sokka second hand shoes and forgot to brush my hair so it got all matted and tangled and fluffy and they never cut Sokka's so it made old ladies at bus stops shake their heads and tut.  
Mum and Dad were New Age travelers-hippies, punks, modern-day gypsies. They never stayed in one place for very long. When I look back and think really hard, all I remember is a faraway blur of tents and festivals and scruffy vans, a ragtag group of happy strangers in mismatched clothes and weird hair.  
In the end, they tried to stay still, to settle in one place. Be a "normal" family. They tired, Dad said, to give us a name, a family, a future. A life. Mum tried. But not hard enough.  
When I was four, she ran away with a guy named Hao. He was taking a camper to Katmandu, and I guess Mum thought that was a better idea than staying around another fifteen years for wiping my nose and not brushing my hair or reading me stories about fluffy bunnies.  
She kissed me and Sokka extra hard one night, and the next morning, she was gone.  
We managed Dad, Sokka, and me. We found a flat without mold on the walls and we stared school and dad started art school, learning how to do ceramics, which is just a fancy word for pottery. We made friends with Toph and Suki and Aang, and Dad made mugs and bowls and fancy plates, all glazed with speckly stuff. He also mage beautiful models of elves and mermaids that all looked a bit like Mum, but I never told him that.  
He finished is course and we rented a place with a workshop attached, and after a while he made enough money for us to live on, selling the bowls and plates to craft shops and the elfy-things to fancy shops and galleries. We stopped eating lentil stew every day and progressed to French bread, waffle fries, and frozen lasagna. We were happy.  
Mostly.  
Last Christmas, Dad bought me these lights and I draped them all around my corkboard, the place with all the letters and postcards and photos and everything else she's ever given me.  
Dad came in one day after I'd put it up and said, "It looks like some kind of Hindu shrine." I just shrugged, because it kind of did. But that's ok, I like it.  
It's all I've got of my mum.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, Katara! Wake up, birthday girl!"

"Katara, stop being so lazy. Get up!" I hear Sokka add.

Dad brings me breakfast in bed on my birthday, every year. And every year I pretend like I haven't been laying there awake all night thinking about Mum. I make a show out of yawning and stretching.

Dad sets the tray down on my bed and walks to the window and pulls back the curtain. The room floods with light.

I look at the tray. It's the same every year- my favorite. Pancakes, but with a special birthday twist. Dad pours the batter and waits for it to cook a bit and then adds a little more to form numbers. This year I have two, spelling out the fact that I'm fourteen. It may seem a little childish, but it smells amazing and I don't care.

Dad sits down at the edge of the bed, still in his pajamas, and grins at me. Sokka does the same.

"Happy Birthday, Katara." He says, giving me a hug.

"Thanks, Dad."

No more birthday worries. I take a bite of the pancakes, happy.

There's a panda lily (my favorite) sitting in a jam jar, and a small package wrapped in blue paper. Another favorite, Smarties.

Everything is just the way it was the first time Dad made me birthday breakfast when I was five. The first birthday after Mum left. I like it like that. It's a tradition.

I take a sip of the water he brought me and smile as I unwrap the Smarties. Dad, Sokka, and I divvy up the ones we like and don't like. After that, Dad brings in my presents. A few small packages and a medium sized odd looking one. He hands me the small ones first.

I open up a box to find a necklace, but not the one I saw in town. This one's prettier. It's blue and has a pendent on it with swirly water designs.

"It was your mum's. I thought you would like to have it." Dad tells me. I smile and hug him, setting it aside. I don't want to put it on just yet. It's special, and I don't want to wear it for just anything.

I open up another package and find a pair of black Vans inside. Finally, dad hands me the medium sized one and I unwrap it to find a violin.

"I just thought you like to learn how to play." Dad says, shooting me a grin.

"It's perfect." I say, plucking at one of the strings and listening to it reside in my room.

I'm all showered and dressed by the time the post plops onto the rug in front of the mail slot. I look the mail quickly, looking for anything with her hand writing. I find nothing and feel my heart sink a little bit. Once I realize there's nothing from her, I take my time and go through the rest of them.

After school, we pile into the window seat at the Jasmine Dragon, Aang, Toph, Suki, Sokka, and me. We're all school books, uniforms, and smiles.

Lee, our usual waiter rolls his eyes when he see's us all and comes over to take our orders.

"Five Cokes, please." Suki says, holding up a note. Typically we get three and share them amongst us, making them last an hour at least. "_Five_ Cokes?" He asks, feigning shock. "And what might the special occasion be?"

"Katara's birthday." Suki tells him with a smile.

Lee walks away muttering something about hopeless kids, but when he comes back with our drinks I laugh. He's loaded mine with cocktail umbrellas, ice, lemon and orange slices, and even a huge strawberry, all floating around in the sea of brown fizz.

We sip at our drinks and talk about our plans for summer. Toph is going on a cruise around the coast with her family. Which she sees as pointless because she cannot see. Aang said his parents wanted to travel around a bit. 'Just go where the wind takes them' is what they had told him, so he didn't really know where he was going to be. The rest of us were stuck here.

Suki looks at our uniforms and for the millionth time states how much she hates them and how she's ready to get out of them.

"I mean, how is anyone meant to look good in one?" She demands, taking off her tie.

"Green tie with puke-yellow stripes? Horrendous."

"Although," Aang says taking the tie from Suki. "They do come in handy from time to time."

I don't see it coming.

There's a quick scuffle, and Aang has the tie over my eyes. Everything goes black, and there's a hand muffling my squeals and more dragging me upright. My so-called "friends" twirl me around a few times before shoving me down again and taking off the blindfold.

I open my eyes and they're all standing in front of me singing "Happy Birthday". Lee is standing there with five slices of hot fudge cake and scoops of vanilla ice cream. The biggest one is loaded with candles; there are even some in the ice cream.

I laugh and blush and blow out the candles and the entire place breaks out in applause. I really love my friends.

We're all walking down the sidewalk on our way home.

Toph has her arm drooped lazily through Aang's. He keeps shooting glances at her, and we all shoot glances at each other. The two seem to be getting kind of _close_ lately.

We get to a light and we wave goodbye to Toph and Aang, Who live down the across the lane and right next to each other.

"I love the bracelet." I tell Aang, hugging him. "And the CD." I tell Toph, hugging her. Pierce the Veil is one of my favorite bands. Toph, with her family connections was able to get me an autographed copy of _Collide with the Sky_.

"I'll see you later." She says with a wink. I chuckle a bit and say, "Bye, Toph."

Suki, Sokka, and I continue down the lane, after a few moments of silence Suki asks, "Have you heard from her yet?" She's asking about Mum.

Sokka shoots a glance at me slightly worried. I smile a little. "No, not yet."

"Well. That one she sent you from Morocco was late, wasn't it?" She asks. It was three weeks late. I was eight. I stopped talking, I stopped eating, and I couldn't sleep at night. I thought she had forgotten about me. But it came eventually. Dad said the postal service in Africa most have been a little iffy. Definitely not her fault.

"Yeah. It was." I say.

"I'm sure it'll be there when you get home." Suki tells me with a smile.

"Me too." I say.

We stop in front of Suki's house. I give her a hug. "Thanks for everything today, Suk."

"It was no problem. That's what friends are for." She tells me.

Sokka hugs her too, and I notice that they hug each other a little tighter that what could be considered just friends.

It occurs to me that all of my friends are practically couples. I smile at the thought.

After they break apart Suki asks me. "You coming in for a bit?"

"Nah. Food's calling my name. Thanks though. I'll see you tomorrow."

Sokka and I walk to the flat in silence. When we get to the end of the lane I see that there's a grubby, multicolored van sitting in the parkway. Sokka raises his eyebrows at me in question. I just shrug. "Probably just clay delivery for dad." I say, even though I don't see a logo on the side of the van.

Sokka and I let ourselves into the flat. "Dad, we're home." I call. I walk over to the hall table and see dad has left the mail there while Sokka walks into the kitchen, grumbling something about being hungry, which he always is. I flip through the cars quickly. Still nothing from her. I feel my heart sink, and suddenly I feel a whole lot older then fourteen.

"Kat, Sokka? Could you c'mere a moment, please?" Dad calls.

I oblige. As I walk closer to the living room I can hear Dad talking to someone, I hope it's not his girlfriend, Sango. She's nice, but birthdays are for family only.

Sokka's reached the living room before I did, and he's just standing there, looking at the women, who I'm sure A) is the owner of the patchwork van out front and B) that I've never seen her before.

Dad is still in his studio clothes, his arms and pants covered in clay. He's looking a little lost.

I know that I'm a little confused.

The women turns around and I get a good look at her. She has super short hair and about a million and a half earrings, all in one ear. And when she smiles at Sokka and me there's something so familiar about it.

"Just look at the two of you! Just look at how much you've grown! Sokka, you're practically a man now. And Tara, you're such a beautiful young lady."

I feel my heart pick up a little. Only one person ever called me 'Tara'. Dad always called me 'Kat'.

Sokka realizes it at about the same time that I do.

"Hi, Mum."


End file.
